This page takes on two important questions about the critical essay you will write this semester in this course: what and what for; it also includes the assignment sheet for the critical essay. My goal is to make this page as useful to you as possible, so let me know if it can be improved. If anything is badly worded, unclear, or missing, please contact me with constructive criticisms and suggestions. Ditto for any questions you may have about any of the options listed on the assignments sheets. Thanks.

What

As you know, you are required to submit a critical essay, which calls on you to analyze the narrative strategies of a particular writer and work from the course. Your critical essay is to be a thesis-driven, analytical, and persuasive four-to-six-page paper. It should not be simply a personal response to what you have read, or simply a statement of your opinions or assertion of your views, but should instead be organized to convince your readers to accept an argument you have developed in response to a specific question. In short, you are being asked to generate an original, creative argument that supports your own perspective on the text or texts you've chosen to write on and is persuasive to your intended audience(s).

What For

Over the course of the semester so far you've already done a good deal of informal writing--ranging from the free writing on specific topics in class to your online participation to your response essay. You'll have begun getting practiced at noticing things about literary texts and asking questions of them; we'll have begun focusing a lot in class on making connections between works and identifying tensions within and between them, interpreting significant passages and image patterns, and considering various answers to questions that you all have posed as well as I. What this assignment gives you the chance to do is develop a sustained argument on a specific topic. The critical essay allows you to focus in on a particular topic or question that most interests you (this involves reviewing your notes and memories of the readings, as well as discussion board contributions), to delve more deeply into specific readings (this involves choosing the readings that best allow you to address the topic or question you have chosen and focusing on those parts that seem most relevant to the topic), and to develop and support an argument about the relation between the readings and the topic or question (this involves both critically analyzing the texts you have chosen to focus on and crafting a valid, persuasive argument). Doing these things will not only improve your skills in active, critical reading and analytical, persuasive writing, but it will also prepare you for the final research project.

The other major purpose of the critical essay is for me to indicate clearly what I see as the major questions or issues raised by fantasy fiction. Each should provide you with something of a framework for understanding and reviewing the course as a whole. Hence, I strongly recommend that you consider carefully each of the options given before settling on one on which to focus your critical essay. It's easy to miss the forest for the trees, especially when there were so many different "trees" we were analyzing all semester, so seeing the range of questions I think are most important to consider when looking back on the course can give you a new, better perspective on what we've read, as well as lay out possible directions for the final research project.

Assignment Sheet

Due: The deadline for submitting a critical essay for this unit to the CE Drop Box on the course ANGEL space is 11:30 pm Friday, 3 December 2010. Late papers will not be accepted or graded, unless you seek an extension by class time on Monday, 29 November.

Format: 4-6 pages (roughly 1000-1800 words), double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins; title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); the basic template is Author. Book Title. City of Publication: Publisher, Date of Publication.); proper MLA format for quotations within a paragraph: "quotation" (12); and blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer. [Please be aware that you'll get a better grade if you first develop your ideas fully, without feeling that you have to stop at a certain page or word limit, and then go back and condense, cut, and otherwise revise so as to be as concise, clear, and persuasive as possible. Don't let the page limit limit your exploration of ideas.]

Criteria for Evaluation: Your grade for the critical essay will be determined by the coherence and validity of the paper's arguments, the effectiveness of the paper's structure in conveying your ideas and convincing your audience, and the quality of the paper's prose (including diction, grammar, syntax, punctuation, and formatting).

Audience: In general, think of your immediate audience as those who have taken and are taking this class; hence, you can assume that your readers have read the texts you're writing on and you don't have to include the kind of background that someone not taking this course would need.

Draft Policy: I would be happy to offer brief comments on your drafts, so long as you get me them in a timely manner. I recommend sending me a draft (at any stage of development) over email and making an appointment for a face-to-face writing conference on it.

Rewrite Policy: I will not grade rewrites of the critical essay, although I will give comments on any rewrite(s) you choose to do (which will improve your preparation/participation grade and better prepare you for the final research project).

Assignment Options: You must choose one (1) of the following options. Extra research is not required for any of these options, although it is permissible, so long as the central argument you are making is your own and the evidence you draw on to support it--including, of course, relevant and important passages from the text(s) you are analyzing--supports the goals of your essay.

Option #1: History I. Traditional historicist scholarship in literary studies would examine an author's life, works, sources, and influences and attempt to generate an argument about the author's relation to his or her own times. Some scholars working in this tradition would focus more on the window into the times that the author's works provide, while others would focus more on how the times shaped the author and his or her works and still others would focus more on the author's perspective on his or her own times inferable from his or her works. Your task if you choose this option is to decide whether you want to focus on one work, two works from the same time period, or two works from different time periods and which kind (or combination) of traditional historicist approaches you want to emphasize. Whatever your decision, your essay should develop and support an argument about meaning and significance of the relation of the work (or works) and its (or their) time (or times).

Option #2: History II. More recent historicist scholarship in literary studies contextualizes literary texts not so much to discover the truth about the past but instead to help us realize or recognize something about the present. Your task if you choose this option is to decide whether you want to focus on one or two works, and if the latter, from the same or different time periods. Whatever your decision, your essay should develop and support an argument about what is at stake for us today in the work's (or works') relation to its (or their) time (or times).

Option #3: Readers/Audiences I. One way of reorganizing our syllabus would be to divide our authors into those whose novel's primary audience was made up of (or intended for) children (Tolkien, Lewis, McCaffrey, Rowling), those whose novel's primary audience was made up of (or intended for) adolescents or young adults (Tepper, Anthony, Pullman), and those whose novel's primary audience was made up of (or intended for) adults (Gaiman and Pratchett, Brust, Kay, Grossman). Another way would be to move from authors who assumed little to no prior knowledge of fantasy's classics and conventions (Tolkien, Lewis, McCaffrey, Anthony, Rowling) on the part of their readers to those who assumed a great deal (Tepper, Gaiman and Pratchett, Brust, Kay, Pullman, Grossman). If you choose this option, you must first decide whether you want to focus on one work from one of these categories (or a reader-/audience-centered one of your own invention), two writers from the same category, or two writers from different categories. Whatever your decision, your essay should develop and support an argument about how an author's (or authors') decisions about audience matters (or matter).

Option #4: Readers/Audiences II. Many of the authors on our syllabus have created works and worlds that have become focal points for diverse and committed groups of fans, who have themselves produced a great range and variety of communities, reference works, online fora, and fan fictions. Your task if you choose this option is first to decide what kind of fan phenomenon you want to focus on and for which author or authors. Whatever your decision, your essay should develop and support an argument about the meaning and significance of your chosen fan phenomenon, particularly for the academic study of fantasy fiction.

Option #5: Intertextuality I. Intertextual critics in literary studies often examine the means, ends, and stakes of a literary "re-vision"--the act by a later writer of revising and reenvisioning an earlier writers work or works. Your task if you choose this option is to focus on one such literary "re-vision" from the course--for instance, Kay or Pullman or Grossman of Lewis--and develop and support and argument that addresses how and to what ends the later writer has revised and reenvisioned the earlier author's work (or works), as well as what is at stake in this "re-vision."

Option #6: Intertextuality II. Intertextual critics in literary studies often try to identify patterns in literary texts, authorial practices, and reader expectations that allow them to differentiate genres and subgenres. Your task is you choose this option is to decide which subgenre of fantasy fiction you want to focus on and which work or works exemplify it (including at least one from the course). Whatever you decide, your essay should identify the key features of the subgenre and develop and support an argument about why it matters.